What Blue-Jays do in Desperation
by Chromonal
Summary: Chapter 1: Tim and Jay are in a hotel room after a close encounter with the Operator and Alex. They decide, or rather Jay decides, the best course of action is to get up north. This one is short, as it is only an introduction. The chapters will get longer and better from now on, I promise.


"We need to go, Tim. We need to get out of here!" His voice was a mix of helplessness and desperation.

"We've _been_ getting out here! If you haven't noticed, that's kind of been our specialty for the last few years." Came the bitter voice from the uncomfortable hotel bed Jay was pacing in front of. The man laying on it watched as the outline of his friend, reduced to nothing more than a distraught and petrified human being, ran a shaky and scratched up hand through his own sweat soaked hair. The light coming from the covered window was barely enough to highlight Jay's now off-white shirt as he moved from wall to slanted wall.

"Then we need to go farther."

The room the two had rented was very small and ridiculously cheap; two indisputable facts which displayed themselves with pride like a Roman warrior, still loyal to his state, after a war victory. The dirty wall paper was peeling away from the cracked vinyl it had been glued onto generations ago; the ceiling was painted in the medium of water stains; the carpet looked like it hadn't been vacuumed in years and what was once, most likely, spotless white porcelain in the bathroom was now chipped and grimy and green in color.

Even the people in the tasteless art prints on the walls looked dead inside, completely drained from being in this energy-sucking room for who knows how long. Tim knew he shouldn't be complaining, however, should just be thankful of whatever money Jay got his hands on [_no matter how he gets it, _Tim thought apprehensively.]

"We need to go somewhere where-..." A pause. Jay stopped moving, steeling himself and his next words came out as clear as the eyes with which he looked at the other man, made even brighter by the thick black circles half-hazardously tattooed around his eyes. "We need to get up north."

"What?" Tim sat up, wincing at the shooting pain in his sides and legs. The previous night's adventures came back into focus from the depths of his thoughts, becoming sharper as he tried to push them away. "Does anything you say even make sense in your own head?"

"I've seen it in movies before, Tim! It works all the time, at least for a while. Alex-" Jay cut himself off. "No one will find us there. We can go and even live there for a while, just to get ourselves back together until we can know for sure we're prepared to do something."

"This isn't a damn vacation, Jay, if all the decrepit hotel rooms have been misleading you."

"If we stay here, we won't be alive for very much longer. We won't have the ability to do anything and all our bits and pieces of random progress will be for nothing. If we leave, we still have a chance to make up a plan. A better plan than what we've been working with so far; we can be of actual use."

Tim moved to swing his legs over the edge of the stiff mattress, but ended up moaning in pain and Jay rushed over to lightly push him back down into a laying position.

"You don't have to move yet, okay? We'll be safe here for a few more days." Jay's eyes flashed sorrow and regret before stifling back down to the usual dejected look they commonly held. If any level of elation was ever found in those same eyes, they certainly didn't know the meaning of the word now.

Even in the almost complete darkness, Tim still caught the look and vocalized his thoughts without thinking. "You did what you had to do. We're still alive." He thought for a moment before adding, "That's all that matters, right?" He knew he had said the wrong thing as soon as it came out. Tim went to apologize, but Jay beat him to speaking.

"Living so we can keep up this repetition. This is the absolute worse kind of stability one could ask for; always knowing something bad will happen." Jay almost laughed, but he settled for a weak chuckle instead as, ignoring the empty bed behind him, he opted to sit down next to his friend, drawing his legs tight up against his chest and resting his chin on his knees.

The pair were left in a painless silence. Tim watched as a dark colored bug walk across the damp ceiling and Jay simply stared with a distant look in his eyes at the fabric of time warp and seal whatever fate they may have together.

Outside the building, beyond the local park and well into the forest, there came a sigh.


End file.
